With the development of Internet technologies, a large number of people communicate and keep in contact with each other through networks, leading to the rapid development of network-based instant messaging products. Users of instant messaging products can not only communicate with each other one on one, but also create an instant messaging group to carry out communication involving more users.
Some instant messaging groups reflect a certain entity relationship among group members, and in one type of entity-relationship-based instant messaging groups, such as a colleague group and a neighbor group, group members in the instant messaging group gather in a certain area. If the position of such group can be determined, various useful information can be provided for group members according to the position of the group, to facilitate work and life of people. For example, other groups or users near the group may be recommended to the group members according to the position of the group, or information about restaurants, hotels, and the like near the group may be provided for the group members according to the position of the group.
Current instant messaging group positioning methods mainly include: a positioning method based on a position manually completed by a user, a positioning method based on a position of a group administrator, and a positioning method based on filtering according to a group name keyword. The positioning method based on a position manually completed by a user requires a user to complete geographical position information of the group manually; however, whether the user completes the geographical position information or not is of the user's own free will, and moreover, it is hard to measure the correctness of the group position information reported by the user. In the positioning method based on a position of a group administrator, the group position is determined solely on the position of the group administrator, and the position of the group administrator is approximately regarded as the position of the group; however, as a matter of fact, the position of the group administrator cannot truly reflect the position of the group. The positioning method based on filtering according to a group name keyword relies on the correctness of the group name keyword completed by the group administrator, for example, the name of a university, city, or place of work, and it is hard to measure the correctness of the keyword completed by the user. Therefore, positioning effects of the conventional instant messaging group positioning methods are unsatisfactory; the conventional instant messaging group positioning methods usually cannot reflect the actual geographical position of the group, and need to be improved.